Word of Moth
Laurence Sterne Trust
"Constantly To Light".
Branshaw sandstone, Pentalikon marble companion piece - both gilded with palladium.
A simple stone step sited at the threshold of the moth study hut in the quarry garden at Shandy Hall, Coxwold, North Yorks - former home of Laurence Sterne, author of 'The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy". Patrick Wildgust, curator at Shandy Hall, has run a programme of trapping and monitoring moth species from the garden for a number of years. The step bears an abstracted inscription: the words reappropiated by Patrick from a first edition of Tristram Shandy, the catchword at the foot of the page providing the key element.
The inscription suggests moth flight patterns.
"Catchword": a word placed at the foot of a page that is meant to be bound along with other pages in a book. The word anticipates the first word of the following page. It was meant to help the bookbinder or printer make sure that the leaves were bound in the right order. The practice became widespread in the mid sixteenth century, and prevailed until the arrival of industrial printing techniques late in the eighteenth century.
